but this country uses violence when it reaches and then it legitimizes the violence . made in america. if you live on one hundred thirty three bucks a month for food i should try it because you know how fabulous. i mean. i know that i'm still the same thing really messed up. and we're all very sort of silly. that's. the worst we're going through the only white house of the day the radio guy in fort lauderdale minutes from a click. i want to watch what we're about to do because you've never seen anything like this i'm told.

come on guys i'm abby martin i can do a very special edition of breaking the set the show is a crusade against the mainstream media because i think it's important to rethink the establishment narrative unfortunately i'm not the only one oscar winning director all over stone has been on this very same mission for quite some time check out the function of media and everyone talks about that saying the news of the day and all the subconscious really important stuff that's going on is being neglect over here to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news. so without further ado here to talk about their new showtime series and book i'll be joined by oliver stone and later his co-author peter cousin dick so let's break that set. up. another block that we're about to do the bieber fever anything like that on top.

of the. this week marks the twenty fifth anniversary of the movie wall street a film that explores the greed and corruption that drives the gears of america's free market check it out if you're not. you are outside the discussion. there is no nobility in offering any more. is good. with what makes you take the fifteen or so it's all going to change. something that's me express. my guest today is the director of that movie he's also a three time academy award winner whose films have been nominated for thirty one oscars most notably platoon born on the fourth of july j.f.k. and nixon he's without a doubt one of the most controversial and influential filmmakers of our time and that's why i'm very pleased to be joined by producer director oliver stone thank

you so much for joining me for having it's nice to great pleasure so wall street is a film that challenge people to rethink human nature one of the most notable lines from the movie greed is good what was your original message about that line and how do you feel looking back twenty five years later at the relationship between wall street and our government. don't get me started you know my father was in wall street so i grew up republican conservative in new york city and my life underwent a lot of changes and by the time i was thirty five forty years old i was rethinking everything and i had a chance to go back and visits my dad's world of wall street from that i knew from the fifty's and sixty's but it completely changed in the eighty's and there was a new breed of banker investment trader shark that had come into the pool and was devouring some of the smaller fish the emphasis being on money not on serving the client not on helping the economy the idea is getting it all you know you could for yourself. and that gene. it was self evident there was

a self destructive behavior about wall street the laws started to deregulate become . cuter spot on a new speed and volume so gordon gecko was a a conglomeration of people that we met and michael douglas portrayed it was slick charming and apparently it attracted a lot of young people to go to work on wall street the film was a surprise hit surprise. you know because an arcane movie about business numbers it doesn't necessarily appeal to the movie going audience twenty years later i went back for money never sleeps the sequel to wall street goes out come out of jail michael that is out of jail and the wall street that i found was even crazier it was far greater than i had remembered in the eight years that i was stunned millions of dollars were now trains of dollars and again the banks that now the banks were deeply involved as you know in in trading and making profits for

themselves as opposed to the economy or for their for the year for their clients so the world has gotten more topsy turvy and wall street more irresponsible my father would recognize. you know wall street could be considered an animal unto itself it has no loyalty to any country it only has a loyalty to capital and capital will move around the world as need be to make money so all of your decorated vietnam war veteran and some of your films born of the fourth of july platoon are among the most prolific antiwar films in american cinema what parallels do you draw to the afghanistan war which is now surpassed the longest american war the torture the parallels because vietnam as a young soldier it was very much they were not wanted we didn't feel wanted we felt that they were taking us for our money that the vietnamese was happy to see a speaker said we meant prosperity we had a good speech real goods we had p.x. as we had cash and i think that there was

a false loyalty and i think very much that afghanistan as in iraq is the same story over and over where white blame. go to intervene in third world nations. it's always a hoax but come on give us the money and the corruption is rampant and of course there's change sides there's no there's no long term interest the vietnamese foreign minister said you know americans will leave yet no stays in afghanistan stays afghanistan iraq stays we have not done well with interventions anywhere but we continue to be an empire you know we have eight hundred plus bases some of the very secret and we created a huge infrastructure global infrastructure where we're trying to be the world's policeman seems like american cinema has changed now a lot of films are just glorifying war i mean even even movies like hurt locker now zero dark thirty it just seems like there's no more critiquing the empire

critiquing american foreign policy like your movie or why why are war movies more angry i think one of the essences of the first movie i did the platoon movie which took ten years to make there was a very eloquent section about. defoe willem dafoe asks you know why are we fighting this war i used to believe it i don't anymore i think that we all became those of us who thought about what we're doing in vietnam began to doubt. and you're right about this mass mindless triumphalism because the soviet empire fell i think about nine hundred ninety one and from that point on the united states started acting as if it was a unilateral player in the world and it was it was a in the movies you see a sergeant private was saving private ryan you see pearl harbor you see blackhawk down you see this is worship of the greatest generation as well as the technical logical all of our machinery our helicopters and now and you know i'm surprised in

this hurt locker you say you see a lot of the there's no judgment about why we're in iraq and in this new movie i gather you know it isn't. at our technological. slickness it's not about the morality of whether you're going into other countries to kill or kidnap people do you think it's an element of self-censorship in a kind of a post nine eleven world and cinematic self-censorship in the sense of self love i think and i think that america is very. tough because of the uncertainties of the ninety's the terrorism and so forth and the concept of zero globalisation that we wanted badly on the capitalist. that we've lost sight of the home military that it takes to be in our position we have to go we came out of world war two the richest most prosperous country in that. we built up a national security state over those seventy years and next to no one on earth ever

not the roman empire the british empire has ever been so big we don't even know how big. militarily but unfortunately the thought process that goes into studying history and knowing what what how this came to being has been lost which is why your series is so crucial all the you're going to agree with or the the blind worship of military patriotism i mean we all have a mother we all have a sense of country and i believe in a military to defend your country but i don't believe your military to conquer the world right absolutely one of your most groundbreaking films my favorite film has been your portrayals of former presidents and j.f.k. . it's arguably the most accurate historical representation of what happened even more so that's the important report i mean there's a scene in the film where joe passé is saying you know could the mob have covered up the investigation could the mob have deterred really block this evidence i mean it seems like you know a lot of people think that the mob was complicit in the assassination but really

this movie kind of lays bare that there was some sort of criminal call that was in part responsible for. case assassination do you bear in mind the chip character described at the time in one thousand nine hundred as a counter myth so the myth of the warranties are. these are my conclusions based on a huge amount of research but we cannot ever prove anything in that movie practically because there's been so much blur you know the facts so much disappearance the autopsy among them the bullets the concept of fingerprints all the chain of evidence was lost oz was interrogation was lost if so it's a huge mess and not of that this is i do believe this is what happened or something similar to it was you cannot kill the president like that it was a complicated and bush and his done in a very methodical scientific way but. i've been fighting on that front but i'm not saying now is a movie and i accepted that it was a movie but when we did this new thing this untold history of the united states

this is a documentary this is ten hours and it's based on facts have been checked and checked again you can and you can dispute there are interpretations and we go to the kennedy murder but the kennedy murder is part of a larger whole of what was kennedy doing i always asked that question of the movie what was kennedy's motive to kill him what what what did what was the difference between kennedy and johnson these are the key question i just can't help but think after seeing that movie where did this criminal component go if they really want to work on the attack no the in military industrial complex in which we are which we think is involved in the murder that's still around very much so it's grown enormous we have another beast in the united states it's just we have the united states we have another country living side by side with it it's called the pentagon and there's just no controlling it it's gone out of hand it's forty percent of our budget it goes to intelligence security and military. and there's also wall street which is another beast which has its own ethic so i think we all suppose i three

countries living side by side tentacles reaching far cross the aisle of our let's talk about next and your portrayal. of nixon was that he was a criminal i mean the cia's portrayed as this evil entity almost the supernatural entity or you know one point the movie the director of the cia is even threatening to kill nixon what do you say to people who say that you were too forgiving of bush and your movie w but i don't see that in nixon that the cia director tried to kill dick said we would that we had to that there was a controversy between helms richard helms and nixon and part of the problems was to cuba papers and what you were it's a dirty story the cia was we nicknamed sometimes capitalisms invisible army goes back to one nine hundred forty seven and its creation in the anti-communist red scare and the cia has misused its mandate for so long and still is in the in with the drone attacks it has its own drones now and it's targeted assassinations it's

essentially always regarded the cia as a criminal organization of sort like a mafia operating inside the u.s. government scaring presidents because they have separate information and it's the same time they they've been battered they've lost the pentagon has taken over a lot of the old cia activities with and jaison joint special operations command it's become almost an equivalent to the cia and visible army. you ask about w w it was a nightmare for me and personally as a documentary that we use we get to an untold history but mr bush jr was the ultimate everything that could go wrong could go wrong after two thousand it was him everything that happened to it two thousand and eleven was misinterpreted and rendered bigger and more hysterical but it's still he was part of a process that had seemed to have been accelerating anyway the process of militarizing the plan bush did it badly obama does it a lot better. so the movie that you made that you say i was too sympathetic to i

was never sympathetic to i was empathetic the difference dramatist i am a drum it's in that case i'm not making a documentary i did. the movie in which we walk in his shoes we understand how this not a very deep thinking man who resembles harry truman in my mind a bit becomes president because he's the son of a president and his drives are very simple to me and i think there's a you're in the film at the same time a little bit of heart quite a bit hard but it's not because i like a. bigger birds when i'll be right back much more with oscar winning they go next. world with. its technology innovation all these developments from around russia we've got the future covered.

more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are old today. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for life you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm charging welcome to the big picture. mission. critic a should three story three

arrangements three risk free. types free. download free broadcast quality video for your media project a free media oh god r t dot com. the luck of luck. with your job or treat anything like the trouble. oh. so you guys just heard me talk the prolific oliver stone about his film trajectory clean some of the most important cinematic masterpieces of our time and now he and his story and peter cousin egg are seeking to push the envelope once again this time through a ten part showtime series called the untold history of the united states check it out. i mean i want to make it as exciting as a. history and we make it not only for me but we.

always feel there's a disconnect about what's officially reporting what actually happened we can accept as something and to. sort of talk about the series and why it's so important to revisit american history through an alternate lens i'm joined now by award winning film director oliver stone along with historian and professor at american university her cousin occur both the creators of the series and the authors of its accompanying book the untold history of the united states thank you so much for coming on and so i saw most of the series already it is mind blowing and i encourage everyone to check it out and i want to bring up the main pillar of the series being relevant with the anniversary of pearl harbor last week the dropping of two nuclear bombs on japan you know and growing up and my education that's the end of the chapter we drop the bombs the war was over we want to believe them that's where i grew up that's the founding myth my children had three of them went to school went to high school and got the same story that we had to bomb japan to

finish the war they were fanatics and we just saved american lives at the idea was if we didn't get trapped atomic bomb the united states would have had to invade we would have lost truman says in his memoir has told a half million men would have died in the invasion and he had no choice but to drop the atomic bomb that's not the end of the story for us that's the beginning of the story and it's the beginning also mythology and soviets are invading japan that's the other side of the coin and the soviet invasion is what really terrifies the japanese and the bomb is being dropped to basically said the message to the russians in a new ballgame and a world war two with no we're no longer allies i'm going to make a long story short but truman has a different strategy than roosevelt ever dreamed of and that's a strange disconnect we get into. too because with the wallace henry wallace was a vice president who got bumped off the ticket in forty four allowing for truman to get in there it's

a great story and that's why you see why history because the past is prologue we'll hear much about wallace. back up and explain i think we might have gone too quickly the americans knew truman knew he said that the main reason he was going to potsdam was to make sure that stalin and the russians came into the war because the united states intelligence kept saying that the thing that the japanese dreaded the most finally break the japanese back was the soviet entry into the war and the soviets entered the war on august ninth three days after the bombing of hiroshima and then united strops the second bomb before the soviets have a chat with japanese have a chance to respond to the soviet invasion and what that's what made the difference the united states had already shown that it could wipe out japanese cities we've wiped out one hundred japanese cities with fire bombs but what changed the equation was the soviet entry which meant now the japanese military strategy was going to be bankrupt and their diplomatic strategy trying to get the soviets to get them better surrender terms was bankrupt that's what led to the end of the war but we knew that

in advance that was going to have the effect and adopting the atomic bomb six out of seven of america's five star officers generals and admirals who got their fifth star during world war two are said that the atomic bomb was either marley reprehensible or militarily unnecessary and douglas macarthur general macarthur says that if we had told the japanese they could keep the emperor they would surrender to may we don't think that we think that's a bit of an exaggeration but the atomic bomb was not necessary and in fact it is so central to the cold war because it's sending a message to the soviet union and it's exactly how stalin interpreted it and stalin's generals interpreted it that they were really the target because the soviets knew better than anybody that the japanese were trying to surrender they're trying to run their campus always to get the better surrender terms so for their mind it was not only gratuitous but it was a it was so good to it is that they said the united states. was ruthless enough to do anything to get its way and that this was a warning to the soviet union at that point i think another aspect of world war two

history is the deaths another aspect of learning about world war two and history books is the proportionality you know the u.s. sacrifice so much i want to play a really important part of the series right now. it was over sixty to sixty five million people lay dead including a list of maybe twenty seven million soviets between ten and twenty million chinese six million jews over six million germans three million jewish pows. two and a half million japanese and one and a half million you kosloff. austria britain france italy hungry remaining in the united states each county between a quarter million and a half million dead. the disproportionality this is stunning i really didn't even know the magnitude of those deaths before i saw that that was really incredible i may completely shatters the misconceptions that we have growing up about most of

all we all we all did i mean we had no america we still think america won the war d.-day and on june sixth forty four but the war was was well on its way to being what the soviets had broken the back of the german military in the east in russia and selling proud of that curse then they were moving at that time we led the d.-day they were moving it through eastern europe the momentum it shifted the germans watched far more men on the eastern front six to one of them like that than they ever lost on the western front besides that it sets up a whole the whole concept of what world war two was because the we don't ever take into account the role of the british empire which controlled a large part of the world the richest resources prior to world war two so as to i mean i see your america stood like me i mean we were lost in this mythology from the beginning of our lives on which like the bomb was necessary we won world war two if you were the guy we have this right to police the world because we won that war on none of these above are true we don't reason we have the right is because we

have the might because we have the atomic bomb and we led all the way through the entire arms race with the soviets we led by and by sometimes by large margins sometimes by less margins but we maintained this grip of this. dominion over the world and now we've moved into another era was space and cyber warfare we control a foot call what they call full spectrum dominance if you like that terminology but essentially we are. a war machine and we have a huge investment in. in an industry that we can't control. so i agree how he laid it out perfectly at the united states military family at the world we've got eight hundred to a thousand bases now it's got all these carrier groups. where weapon i think space russia and china have been the lead for trying to prevent the weaponization of space in the united states is ignoring that sometimes the vote in the united

nations if everybody know we're up against one against the united states we insist on weapon i space now we. sometimes israel hasn't even started actually thought the marshall islands over the united states basically stand alone on the on these things and we're spreading this we spend so much on our military so much our base is forty percent of the budget but what upsets us the perhaps the most is we think that we have the psychological right as american to do that. i think the whole debate is wrong between romney and obama between all this bipartisan foreign policy about how strong we should be and can we get stronger and stronger wiser than anybody else i had this mindset asking what is the path away from global control why can we not join the world and be a peaceful cooperative member of a. global perspective with a global history that we belong together as one planet especially with the climate threat is upon us so this is what's lacking in our schools i think. we have what

they call american exceptionalism is the root of our heart we look at the flag and we think that's the greatest good ever existed that people are dying to come here and that we are the greatest this is a very i think i'm healthy mindset it's the conventional wisdom and docketed. you know that the bombs the heart you know because you think so doesn't nothing last in history that we know six empires fill in the twentieth century there's bound there were no. the empire can last except two we may maintain the military to millions which is probable because of our space age over the next twenty thirty years but think of the the spiritual tyranny that's within when what happens to the citizenry when you dominate a world and what i think that henry wallace warned about in one nine hundred forty five and one hundred forty six if we treat the russians betrayed the soviets so brutally now well we've got the bomb and we've got all the power how are they going to respond when they get upper hand we have to think about that same thing with the

chinese the national intelligence council report that just came out this week says that by twenty thirty china is going to have the biggest economy in the world not the united states but china that china is going to be moving toward military parity at some point this is our chance to get it right with china instead of this specific pivot that we have now hillary clinton wrote that article in foreign policy magazine titled america's pacific century that the united states is going to tip it toward asia now in order to control china if that's the mentality then when the chinese become more power with the united states how are they going to treat us i mean this is our chance to actually have a pivot a very good kind of pivot by creating a broader world community that includes the chinese rather than saying that they're somehow the enemy who we've got a contest or there's a broader breakdown it's not just china versus the u.s. i mean that's kind of an american fantasy about us like a game but you know you think about regional powers it all come on and start to

revolt against essentially a tyranny will the u.s. let's say brazil and india and turkey. venezuela all these because they have these countries are rich in resources and they are regional powers to make sense for them to to resist the u.s. feels that the more we can impose our will through our ways of doing business. that people will see that it's the right way doesn't work that way people don't have the same values that we have. as we know from the george bush you're either with us or against. us. we grow up learning how to manage the empire without questioning whether or not we actually need one that's right and obama both ways very good at it i think he's married and i'm sure there is great when he looks in the camera he was i will keep this country strong we are going to be indispensable nation he repeats it. but it's a very good salesman and unfortunately we're out of time it was an absolute honor

pleasure to have been going on i really encourage i want to check out the untold history of the united states after the groundbreaking work really important for everyone to see it in this country thank you i appreciate it. deadly rivals the decades. if good fifteen thousand people killing each other in any other country there would be diplomats there would be mediators. self-imposed out costs from society i will cut myself chemical attack my brother

understand i want to. immediately. going to leave basically attack the cause of my anger and my frustration the. judge well into the dome. two of the most violent gangs in the us history. is just all model kill or be killed with colors matching the national flag. but this country uses violence when it reaches its and then it legitimizes the violence they are made in america on.